I'm not unsympathetic but the time to build an ark is before the rain starts. With so many living paycheck to paycheck it can be challenging to build up stores of things you need but in many cases it's not the money as you've noted. Psychologically it's a stretch for a lot of folks to prepare for things that are, in their minds, 'black swans'. But having some preparation isn't just for the zombie apocalypse, it's handy for common emergencies (winter storms, layoffs, etc).

Who knows- maybe in a few months whoever survives and looks back at this thread will say I was pollyannaish but I don't think it's going to go to guns. Folks won't need an AR to repel boarders coming to take their TP. That said, I have my firearms and a good supply of the ammo calibers I use the most (9mm, 5.56, 12ga). Be prepared is the saying!

It's funny. I don't consider myself much of a "prepper". My focus when joining Equipped.com was on outdoor activity preparation, getting found, and short-term survival. Still, we've always been quite self reliant, and this recent COVID19 event really hasn't had much impact on us, especially now that we're retired and living in a rural area. Certainly a contamination of our well would mess things up badly for us and our horses.

With that said, I will say I'm a bit worried about the availability of hospital services for us now that I hear we are also in peak flu season. Our goal is to be two of those people who never get it, and we'll work hard toward that goal by following CDC guidelines.

This reality check will make the most prepared not feel that way.

I was thinking about the gun situation.
and yes there are runs on gun purchases and runs on ammo, you can't find a single common round (9mm, 223, 45ACP) and Cheaper than Dirt has been accused of price gouging.

and while my first thoughts was that there was no need for such things that this would be mostly stay in place and just weather it out. But a little research shows that Grocery stores in the UK have asked for security, and some unrest has bean spoken of in Germany. but that is all just hearsay.

To be honest it s my hope and desire that this will all just be a stay in place and the biggest issue is that people will have cabin fever a lot.

Having retired mid-last year I've had time to indulge in new hobbies such as ham radio and it was because of many of the ideas from here and those ideas are keeping me busy. It's funny in that I sort of evolved into a "prepper" at some point. I originally found this site because I was always doing training (Criminal Justice/LEO environments) and way back in the past, a couple of decades ago I had to put together a "survival workshop". This site helps me stay current and up to date.

So back three decades ago or so, I found a Doug Ritter type consultant who helped build the course curriculum and deliver it to my audience. This was for South Dakota conditions and we were working on coping with winter and getting stranded - think Game Wardens, Troopers, Deputy Sheriffs and small town cop types and a huge number of the DOT plow operators. We spent the late summer and fall flying around the whole state doing these workshops and I learned a lot about what to do and not to do - both in life situations and in classroom presentations.

Fast foreword to today and I found this wonderful source of information, conversation and just good folks. While I don't have an Ark and will need to 'shelter' in-place for the most part - the original ideas from long ago are still being reinforced and expanded on by being a part of all this. Thanks to one and all!!

Paul -

Oh yeah - the fun/funny stuff and spirited discussions are great!

I'm an optimist on some levels which is funny because I'm a cynic on a day to day basis. What is the old saying? Be polite but have a plan to kill everyone you meet? The media loves stories about people going all Mad Max but my experiences have shown folks pull together in a crisis. Of course, I've not see one quite like this.

I'm a self-described gun nut, and at age 50 I've seen this movie a few times. The ammo panics of the past have been self inflicted and this probably no different. But just since I've seen it before and because I like to shoot, I have ammo on hand, plenty in the calibers I use the most. While I don't anticipate any "Book of Eli" or "The Road" situations to pop up I am pretty well armed and stocked up.

One of my best friends is a hardcore prepper. I am not. As was noted above, I was drawn to ETS for the wilderness survival information. My being relatively prepared just stems from growing up in the country where this stuff was just common sense.

First of all, hello again. It's been a while.
Glad to hear of your lessons learned.

I'd like to knock down a few of your concerns, in a positive fashion.

If we look to Italy as the "this is as bad as it's going to get" it's pretty ugly...BUT.

For most people, life is just...boring. The food supplies are fine. The medical equipment supply lines, not so much. But there are so many people wanting to help in some way. Are you sewing medical masks? Are you 3D printing ventilator valves? Are you STAYING OUT OF THE WAY?? That's what you need to do.

As far as energy, water and telecom, no, that's not a real risk. Same with logistics. The cows will get fed the milk will get supplied, etc. etc. America is a net food exporter.
Also, FWIW, you can wipe your ass with a washcloth and clean the cloth in soap and water. That's how cloth diapers work and you don't actually need TP if you have some washcloths.

Do you know what you need to worry about? A natural disaster overlay on this whole thing. A hurricane. An earthquake. Something like that. But the Pandemic itself - it's already ending in Asia, and it will end in Europe and it will end here.

I suggest you turn off the TV, get a good book and a nice glass of wine or something and take a break.

Now that's the way to think! Great!

Good points! Nice to you around these parts again, MartinFocazio!

As we have plenty of TP and ammo, just because, my biggest concerns revolve around other things. The calls for "friends" who have suddenly decided they need to arm themselves are annoying, but...

I put "friends" in quotes because all my good friends already own firearms and most have trained to one degree or another.

Best story was a friend who is a serious collector, and occasional dealer, of NFA firearms. As in, he buys ammo by the pallet, if you get my drift? One of his neighbors who has previously shown his significant disdain for my friend's interests knocked on his door and asked whether he could buy a firearm from him. My friend told him he only had one to sell, an M1919A2 and it would be $25K CASH up front and he'd have to wait about 7-9 months to take delivery, assuming he passed the background check including fingerprints. He said the expression on the guy's face was priceless.

In any case, the point is, prepare ahead of time. A crisis is not the time to prep, it's the time to be glad you did. How many will heed this lesson they learned? Not that many if history is any guide, although I expect many will make sure they have a month's supply of TP on hand going forward. ;=)

Wow, Doug- that's not even a bad price! Even with the extra $200 for the tax stamp!

"Having two vehicles that are paid off"
I feel like this is a significantly underrepresented subthread of being prepared! Financial preparedness buys me a lot more restful nights than the pallet of ammo would.

the current situation really focused me on the number of friends that have pretty serious underlying medical conditions....a lung transplant and another just finishing chemo and radiation...COPD...friend's wife with LUPUS etc...

keep safe

Well said, sir.

I walk down aisles empty of paper products and bottled water, and turn into aisles fully stocked with beer, wine, and ice cream.

People have the strangest priorities.

And if I have no tp, I am ikely sitting next to bathtub: grab a shower. Way more effective than washing my hands, and it's not like I have lots else to do.

I’ve started doing basic pistol familiarization via FaceTime for friends. While I’m certainly not loving that so many people I know are only now buying firearms, I am optimistic that I can train those who are coming to me on the three cardinal rules and prevent them from having an ND.

and if you didn't get nursemike's veiled suggestion a hand held shower wand on the stream setting makes a pretty good bidet...

Black powder gun deliverd to your door?

Over time, I have used various expedients for TP. One of the best (and most exhilarating) is a nice big snowball. Frozen bidet??

hikermor... it is 7:26pm (est) and 78F.... snow is late this year

Just climb up intothe mountains. There's lots of snow there.

oh, wait!! Les, You are in Florida... No mountains there, Darn!!

Hikermor, I salute you. That is the most mountain man act since D. Crockett used a snowball for a pillow.
How long did it take you to unpucker?

Wine,guns,ammo what else does a guy need

Bacon.

Even if they are available and can be shipped to the door that would not resolve the trainig issue. Unforunately muzzle loaders require even more training than cartridge guns and they offer more options to make mistakes during loading. The sequence of components is important and caps not seated properly can cause failures to fire.
The blackpowder revolvers I could handle had really light and crisp triggers. For an untrained person that is begging for a negligent discharge. I would not recommend that.

Max, I agree with everything you have said regarding black powder weapons as firearms. But I think that the folks who have waited to this circumstance to seek a firearm aren't looking for a weapon, they are looking for a symbol. Like the folks who have no health care background want a mask without having any desire to acquire the training and discipline to use it successfully. Or like the cargo cult folks in the South Pacific who built replica airplanes and crates, believing that this would cause other planed to land and bring tradegoods.

You might be right for many. However, the people who have reached out to me for training were not interested in symbols, they were interested in having the appropriate tools to defend their families.

I wish we had remembered to get enough Yeast.

Yeast? You don’t need yeast... How To Make Sourdough Bread Masterclass
Flour, water and ... wild yeast is all around, the bacteria is in the air.

Yeah, but I also like "classic" bread.

Is yeast seriously out of stock in your area? The local Costco here has plenty.

In Denver - yes.

Masks might be a good idea for everybody.

If none appears I can pick some up at Costco and ship it, depending on how much of a hurry you're in, gulliamo.

That's so nice of you! We have enough for now and am going to try the sourdough starter route.

If that fails I'll hit you up. Thanks again!

Cool, just let me know. And of course, the offer is subject to change if the TP hoarders here expand their gluttony to yeast.

seriously and absolutely and still is out of stock.

How to make your own yeast for baking - The Verge

And then there are baking powder biscuits, quick breads, crackers, pita, naan, perhaps the apex of yeastless flour cuisine: sausage gravy.

There’s a good video at: Cultivate Your Own Wild Yeast Starter Which explains how to get started making your own yeast. The video is just for making starter so you don’t need store-bought yeast. The bread you make depends on the flour and other ingredients which you choose for the bread — wheat, rye, whatever.

This won’t necessarily make bread with that San Francisco Sourdough flavor. If you want sourdough starter, he mentions how to get that flavor in the video. If you do want Sourdough bread, check out How To Make Sourdough Bread Masterclass

Then if you have starter you need to feed, take the part you’d throw away and dry it. Seach YouTube for drying sourdough — drying sourdough starter Then you’ll never run out.

YMMV

You could try and contact a local brewers club. They could have something called barm. It is yeast with some aromas from the beer. That would be really classic bread.
Townsends has a Youtube channel where he explains some topics about cooking in the 17th and 18th century. I like the channel

Here in the UK, TP was almost unobtainable in retail stores a few weeks ago, and is still in short supply.
It was however easy to purchase giant toilet rolls on UK fleabay, these are plentiful.

Dried pasta was in short supply, but is now easier to find.

Many canned goods are in short supply with most supermarkets limiting purchases.

Spot shortages of some fresh foods but no generalised shortage.

Shotgun ammo readily available, other firearms and ammo for same are almost unknown in the UK.

Some people are IMHO exaggerating food shortages in the UK. Many products are in short supply, but alternatives are readily available.
As an illustrative example, if baked beans are out of stock, there are almost certainly tinned tomatoes or tinned spaghetti available.
If dried spaghetti cant be found one week, then other types of dried pasta are probably available.

Likewise some brands of beer are unavailable, but alternatives are available. No general beer shortage.

How is the yeast situation for those of you that use it?

Some stores have fresh yeast but limit to two cubes per purchase. Dry yeast is still not available on a regular basis.
I still have some dry yeast and prefer sourdough anyway.
Sourdough chocolate cake may sound weird but tastes really nice.

It is about the same in Germany. Dry pasta like spaghetti are the most popular variation. Cheap brands in pound packages were out (and sometimes still are) but premium brands and packages with 5 kg were always available.

Canned meat may become a little harder to get as some slaughterhouses got locked down because the workers there got sick. The worker lived in small quarters and distance could not be maintained. So before one got sick all had it.

Beef prices are astronomically high right now, higher than I've seen in my lifetime. But the supply seems adequate.

Had a neighbor in the adirondacks whose holding there was an off grid cabin full of preserved food that he visited occasionally but that he maintained primarily as a refuge from calamity.
He had grown up in Germany, and his dad was a milk man. As soon as WW2 became imminent, his dad butchered and canned the two draft horses that pulled the milk cart, and the family lived on it through the war. His grandfather had done something similar to survive WW1. Tof the he food and sanitary products hoarding is probably a positive evolution away from our grasshopper culture of the past few decades.

Cheap rechargeables are nearly useless...

Are you talking about specific rechargeable devices with built-in batteries? Individual rechargeable batteries? LiION? NiMH? Chargers? Specific brands?

Rechargeable aa/aaa from china...off ebay and not much good at holding a chrage

I assume NiMHs? Were they low self dicharge (LSD)? Sometimes a deal is not a deal, but that does not mean all is lost. I've run a lot of cheap NiMHs with acceptable results (relative to the cost).

I think we've discussed this before. Could be a poor forming charge, could be a long time in storage, could be one cell that isn't charging and dragging the performance of the others down.

The best solution is a diagnostic charger. The low-tech solution is charge them hard, burn them way down, and repeat several times. NiMHs need to be worked hard on occasion to take and keep a full charge.

thanks for the tips - I will experiment.

Holiday shipping will be much slower than in past years; order early.

Two recent trips -

Went to BJs Wholesale Club to stock up the newly defrosted freezer today (Friday 10/31). Seems as if everybody had the same idea. I've never seen the place so jammed.

Significant depletion in the TP aisle. When my daughter was young she had a part-time job as a checker in a supermarket. Whenever a snow storm was forecast everybody bought bread, milk, eggs, batteries, and of course, TP. Apparently it's the same for an election.

A few days ago I went to Cabela's in Hamburg, PA looking for a spotting scope. While I was there I asked if they had any .223 in stock. No, not one round.

- - - -

As an aside, I discovered that Cabela's has a distinct price differential for spotting scopes. There's the $49.99 scope (which I bought), and then there's the $400 and up scopes. Actually, as high up as about $2,500.

"Patriot" seems to have replaced "tactical" as the hot marketing buzzword.

Mask usage varies by location.

A small electric/tester (insulated) screwdriver is a cheap multi-purpose tool.

From unentangling two fine necklace chains of my daughter, to cleaning salt deposits on faucet thread during a plumbing job. You will appreciate this small, light an inexpensive tool.

Yes, you can use the small screwdriver part of those pocket tools (like Atwood tools) or swiss army knife, but it is not insulated, nor can it reach deep enough in some cases.

The other day, my grand son wanted to watch TV in a chalet we have rented, and the external part of the ON/OFF button was broken. I inserted the small screwdriver tip and pushed the inner part in, and the TV was ON. Knife tip would have worked too, but I wouldn't take the risk of an electric shock.

Other things I have learnt recently :
FINISH YOUR JOB LIST THE EARLIEST YOU CAN, or else you may regret it !!!

This Corona mess has shown me that I was right to have finished several jobs earlier, like donating several boxes of my personal library to suitable centers and organizations. From children magazines to books about disabilities ..etc. I worked hard to move those boxes from my dad's house (second floor) to my house (first floor) in another town, sort them out , keep about one third and distribute the rest. If I delayed this job, not only Corona would have stopped it, my knee problem would have made it impossible.

There are other jobs that I have procrastinated and delayed. I am regretting right now. With health and money issues, I have learned a valuable lesson not to delay today's job until tomorrow.

I am learning that organizing gear is important - makes it easy to find the right thing.

Here's a followup, one day short of ten months later.



If we'd left town in March we'd almost certainly have come back in a week or three. Based on the information I have now, it would have been an overreaction. Based on the information I had then, I still don't think it would have been.

The rest of what I wrote then seems to be just as true, other than that the TP shortage was very brief here.

New lessons since then:

• Every cellphone in my family uses the same large national provider. I do have an independent capacity to make and receive phone calls via the Internet and my home Internet is with a different carrier. With that said, I think I should get an inexpensive prepaid phone from one of the other large national carriers.
• Good relations with our neighbors have (unsurprisingly) paid off both in fellowship and assistance. In October we had a security issue with the police involved; the way the neighborhood worked together with us to mitigate the problem was gratifying. Unfortunately, the perpetrator was not arrested, but more importantly the problem has not recurred.
• All four schools we are involved with (one for Mrs. Magnet as an professor, the younger Magnets as students) are all flailing and failing to adjust to the circumstances. Losing most of Mrs. Magnet's income hurts, and losing it due to bald-faced incompetence stings.
• Carefully planning our essential travel has made things much easier.

I have learnt that while I visit forums to TALK about survival, some people are practicing it in their daily life.

Was reading about refugees. A man lost one of his legs, yet he was still focused on the wellbeing of his family. They lived in a refugee camp and were helped with food, but couldn't get a tent to protect them from the elements. So, the guy gathered the empty sacks of food delivered to refugees and he sewn the sacks to make a tent. Helping organizations noticed the improvized tent and provided him and his family with a proper one.

Through the same story I realized for the 1000th time the importance of the skill of improvization

Surviving in extreme cold requires pre-planning.

Most people spend their time planning for the wrong event with the wrong gear.

added a belt to my edc. Pants staying up turns out to be fairly important.